The Allen and Lamar Sculpture Garden will open Saturday, Oct. 24. The event to celebrate the unveiling of the first sculpture will be 2-4 p.m. at 123 N. Jefferson St. in Washington.
The Blounts are always trying to add a little more beauty to the Oglethorpe County area.
Patrick Blount, the only certified artist blacksmith in Georgia, is expanding his existing shop to include a sculpture garden. Leye Blount, his wife and co-owner of Greenhow Handmade Ironworks, is just as excited about the project.
“We've always really wanted to make that shop that we got a center for arts in rural Georgia …” she said. “Now that it's our fifth year there, we really wanted to recenter on that idea of doing more fine art and art that the community could enjoy.”
The shop is in Washington, about 25 miles east of Lexington. The Oglethorpe County residents, who have lived in Winterville for 17 years, bought the property in 2021.
The building had been vacant since 1978 and had fallen into disrepair.
“You could see the sky from multiple vantage points in the building,” Patrick said in a press release. “If it rained, the whole place just flooded.”
He spent much of their first three years restoring the building, which served as a blacksmith shop from the 1880s until World War I.
Leye said she’s heard that it served many purposes following World War I, including a go-kart factory, a Ford dealership and a skating rink.
The building’s original blacksmiths, Ben Allen and Peter Lamar, are the sculpture garden’s namesakes.
The Allen and Lamar Sculpture Garden’s first piece will be unveiled Oct. 24, and the couple plans for it to expand from the space behind the building into the side lot. They said it will be a public space that visitors can enter at any time.
The unveiling event is free and open to the public, but art will be for sale, including large botanical pieces, small abstract pieces and functional clocks.
Patrick’s next challenge will help him grow the garden. He plans to make a new sculpture piece every week for a year, beginning in November, in what he calls Project 52.
Leye said she hopes the garden will attract people to the area and help them find beauty everywhere they look.
“I want it to be something that makes people happy and brings a little bit of joy to their life,” she said.
Patrick also offers blacksmith classes for beginners at the shop, and he is giving one of the featured presentations at the Hands on History Symposium 2026 Nov. 6-7 in Athens.
But he never lost sight of his original vision.
“I'm really proud of the fact that, with the business, Patrick's always kept an eye on fine art and bringing beauty into the world and trying to make the world a more beautiful place,” Leye said.